Which countries have the death penalty?
SAUDI ARABIA executed 81 people on March 12, 2022 taking the state’s death toll to 92 so far this year.
We take a look at which other countries still practise the death penalty and when the UK stopped exercising capital punishment.
Which countries have the death penalty?
According to the , over 70 percent of countries have abolished capital punishment.
As of 2022, 55 countries still utilise the death penalty with countries employing a variety of methods including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, electrocution and beheading.
These are the countries that still have the death penalty:
- Afghanistan
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belarus
- Belize
- Botswana
- China
- Comoros
- Cuba
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Dominica
- Egypt
- Equatorial Guinea
- Ethiopia
- Gambia
- Guyana
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Iraq
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Lesotho
- Libya
- Malaysia
- Nigeria
- North Korea
- Oman
- Palestine
- Qatar
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Saudi Arabia
- Singapore
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Syria
- Taiwan
- Trinidad and Tobago
- UAE
- United States
- Vietnam
- Yemen
- Zimbabwe
On March 12, 2022 Saudi Arabia executed 81 men for a range of alleged crimes including terrorism, murder and protesting.
The beheadings were widely condemned, including by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet who condemned the executions and said they
Countries still using the death penalty include China, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan and the United States of America where thirty of the fifty states still exercise capital punishment.
So far in 2022 the United States have executed three people by lethal injection.
How many people are executed every year?
Ninety-two people have been executed in Saudi Arabia in 2022 so far, dwarfing the figure of 67 executions in 2021.
Eleven prisoners were executed in the USA in 2021.
Amnesty International recorded 657 executions in 20 countries in 2019, a decrease of 5 per cent compared to 2018 (at least 690).
There were at least 2,307 death sentences in 56 countries in 2019, compared to the total of 2,531 reported in 54 countries in 2018.
At least 26,604 people were known to be under sentence of death globally at the end of 2019.
Nearly 90 per cent of these happened in just four countries: Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – but these figures exclude China and North Korea, where numbers remain a state secret.
Which countries still have public executions?
A public execution is when the public the person convicted are allowed to watch them be put to death.
The countries where these still occur are: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Somalia according Amnesty International.
When was the last execution in the UK?
The last people to be sentenced to death in the Britain were Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans – real name John Robson Walby – in 1964.
They had knifed a friend to death for money.
The executions took place simultaneously at 8am on August 13.
Public anger led to the suspension of executions in 1965 and they were abolished in 1969.
Technically, the death penalty could still be imposed for offences including treason, violent piracy or certain military crimes until 1998, but no executions took place.